Posts by SteveH

In Maungakiekie for example RADHAKRISHNAN, Priyanca could have won if Chloe Swarbrick who is on the Green list had asked voters to give their electorate vote to Labour. Would it have made an overall difference to the total of electorate + party vote - I'm not sure.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan was way up the Labour list too though (12th) - she was always getting in. Denise Lee was third from bottom for National, and more people voted for her than voted for National. I wonder if some people thought that having 3 MPs in the electorate was better than having 2. I did see more of Lee's signs, and basically none from Swarbrick so perhaps it was just the amount of campaigning that Lee did that got her home.

Personally I voted for Radhakrishnan even though I really supported Swarbrick because I didn't want Lee in Parliament. Tried to convince my right-leaning friends that they should vote against Lee too as they'd end up with a better MP off the list, with (I suspect) no success.

In the end a lot more people voted for Chloe Swarbrick than voted for the Greens which just makes no sense at all to me. That certainly wasn't a tactical choice.

It's interesting what happens if we remove the USA from the picture. The US was a late entrant after all, as was Japan.

Yes, it looks both a lot more achievable and a lot more acceptable to the remaining players. But it'll require renegotiation, probably from scratch so even if there is a will to do it, it'll take years.

Well, he opposes the TPP, for one. I know, I know. Neither of them are really believable on this point. Not even to get started on TTIP or TISA.

Clinton is also opposed to the TPP.

If Obama can't get it ratified before he leaves office it might not get ratified by the US (unless the new Pres flip-flop, of course). Unfortunately that probably won't get us out of the crap the US insisted on adding as I can't see the other nations restarting negotiation.

Now, Mike Hosking my appear to not be good with maths, but that is simply not the case. He is not a stupid fellow, he will most likely know full well how the tax system works, and how to benefit from it as a high earner and also asset owning person.

He's smart enough to pay someone to minimise his taxes. Whether he himself understands how the tax system works is undetermined. But if he does know that what he's saying is wrong then he's not just being "simply mischievous", he's being disingenuous and dishonest. Personally I suspect incompetence is the cause here, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Does it seem tin-foil-hat-ish to point out how cynical and manipulative it was for the pro-Silver Fern govt to schedule the referendum for just three weeks after the (All Blacks favourited to win) Rugby World Cup final?

It does seem quite tin-foil-hat-ish. For one thing we've been favourite at every RWC and only won 2 (before this one), and both of those at home. Most analyses had the ABs most likely to win but still below a 50% chance. "They" would have been taking a significant risk in trying to tap into post-RWC euphoria given that it was more likely to be post-RWC depression.

Secondly, the obvious candidate flag for such a plan would be the silver fern on a black blackground. That's the design that's actually associated with the ABs. So if your conspiracy theory is right then why wasn't that design one of the final four? Did "they" forget to manipulate the flag panel?

So Assad’s incumbent administration designed a civil war to potentially oust itself and decimate its country while allowing verifiable information that it was the architect of these events to be widely disseminated via western media.

"Architect" may imply a degree of foresight and planning that wasn't actually present, but it seems incontrovertible that the genesis of the current situation in Syria was Assad's brutal treatment of peaceful protesters.